There are days I still toss and turn in my bed, thinking how horrifying my experience in self-publishing was. I spent months perfecting the way on how my first book launch would go; I did research and had notes all around my room, making sure I did not miss a step. Just as calm seas can turn into rough waters, I quickly learned that I was not prepared.
The first step to me was to write the book, self-edit, check my notes, the second round of edit and put it to the side to forget about it for a month. Afterward, I would pick the manuscript, reread it to see if I missed anything on the first two rounds of editing. During this step, I would hire a cover artist and an illustrator to make sure I would not chicken out on the process, dropping the project altogether. Spending the money would solidify the continuation of this dream. Working in tandem with other creative minds would help me develop market strategies on how to let the world know I have a book coming out.
Step two was a doozie, Marketing. I do not have a lot of friends or am I popular in social media, this by itself would hinder me from having the shares and retweets I need to spread my book like wildfire. With that in my view, I did not give up and continued working with the illustrator. This helped me rake up some new followers using their art help and specific keywords. To my surprise, that worked well enough, but I did not prepare for the other steps of marketing, creating never-ending media content to keep the masses entertained.
Step three was I thought the most natural step, hire a real editor to make sure my writing was good quality. After a few rounds and research, I found a company that tried stealing a substantial amount of money. This is because they did not edit the book but threw it through a spell-check. How do I know this? Well, for one, I could see the changes they made, and I on purpose plugged in misspellings and grammatical errors that they missed. After informing them that they did not do a good job, they asked me for another try since on their website and contract stated: “100% money-back guaranteed”. Five attempts later, I asked them for my money back, but they did not comply. So, I did the smart thing, called my bank and told them my story, and the bank put a case against them. The best part, one hour later, after placing the complaint, the editing company called me asking me to take the case off them, and they would reimburse me forty-five percent. I said no, talked to the company manager, and after a few exchanges of words, I got all my money back. I win.
Step four was also a nightmare for me; with the manuscript revised by a real editor who caught all my mistakes, I decided to make sure the format of the text was correct, fix it up and place it in Amazon. All went smoothly, and once I finished prepping the book and making sure all was right in the world, I pressed publish. Big mistake, I did not see the “author copy” button to make sure the book was as I prepared it. Once my copy got home, I remember seeing red, the title was missing an apostrophe, the chapters did not align in the margin, random blank pages, and it looked cheaply made. Before I could pull back my book, around one hundred copies were sold. Needless to say, I drank a lot that day, and cried a fair amount.
I was able to change the name in Amazon, I was able to retract my book and re-send it to editing just in case, and after four more tries the manuscript seemed up to par to my standards. Now, as I worked on my second and third volume, I noticed little punctuation errors while rereading my first book. I’m glad I’m not super popular since it would have genuinely destroyed my self-esteem.
After some self-meditating and hindsight, I developed a few questions to live by: Why is this system complicated? Is it me? Why are there so many fake editors? Why am I doing this again? Did people like the book? With all these questions looming, I find myself thinking, “Even though this whole experience is and was a mess, I can safely say I can’t wait to do it again.”
K.Rivera Author page 